Stanford will remember the Alamodome, all right. The Cardinal will remember how it let an NCAA women’s basketball title slip through its fingertips, losing to No. 1 Connecticut 53-47 on Tuesday evening in San Antonio. Stanford will remember how they had the top team in the land and all its Geno Auriemma karma by the ying-yang, only to let the Husky have the last violation on the Stanford Tree.
A brave Stanford sign shown on ESPN’s telecast read “UCONN: 77-1.”
It was nearly prophetic, but the Huskies, who went 39-0 in winning their seventh national title, have now won 78 straight games.
So Stanford is left with that good, old college try feeling. It should be proud it was the only team to lose by single digits during that 78-game UConn run. It should be proud it had the biggest lead over the Huskies — 9 points — during that same span. Stanford should be proud of its record-setting 36 wins, the most in a season by a Stanford team. But, I doubt if that’s how Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer is looking at it. I doubt that is how her players are looking at it. And I doubt it’s how the Cardinal fans throughout the world are looking at it.
What was shown in living color on ESPN was Stanford taking a 12-5 lead on a Kayla Pedersen trey with 11:48 left in the first half. A worried Auriemma called time out. The Huskies, like a champ being stunned by a punch out of nowhere by the challenger, needed to get to the corner to regroup and check all their parts.
UConn, which couldn’t hit the broadside, was there for the taking. But, Stanford never landed the knockout blow when it had the chance. For the next four minutes, 26 seconds, neither team scored. Connecticut star Maya Moore made a hoop, then Cardinal guard Jeanette Pohlen nailed a 3-pointer for 15-7. But, that scoring drought of nearly 4 1/2 minutes will haunt Stanford forever.
UConn’s All-American center Tina Charles was a mess in the first half, uncharacteristically traveling and clanking shots she normally knocks down. ESPN color analyst Doris Burke even started making excuses for Charles, it got so bad.
“Tina Charles had to work so hard in the semifinal game against Baylor’s 6-8 center Britney Griner,” Burke said repeatedly. “It’s starting to show. She doesn’t have much left.”
When the Huskies went on a convincing run in the second half and Charles was blocking shots left and right and scoring at will, that excuse was nowhere to be found from the non-stop Burke, who never should have gone there in the first place.
VanDerveer’s defensive game plan worked to perfection in the first half, limiting the Huskies to perimeter shots. Stanford’s best hope for a win was to have UConn go cold, and it did. Stanford forward Nneka Ogwumike owned the defensive glass in the first 20 minutes with eight defensive boards. However, Ogwumike, who had 16 boards and a whopping 38 points in Stanford’s semifinal win over Oklahoma, couldn’t take over the game as she had Sunday. She finished with just 11 points and only one offensive rebound, the latter one of the more telling stats of the game.
Stanford center Jayne Appel will remember the Alamodome, shooting 0-for-12 from the floor. She’ll remember stepping on Tina Hayes’ right foot with 15:48 to play, aggravating her already sprained ankle. Appel sat for awhile as the Huskies completed a 17-2 run to take charge. Guard JJ Hones broke the ice with a 3-pointer. However, ESPN failed to get the shot when it happened because it was doing a highlight tape of Moore, who had gone off in the second half after a miserable first half.
Appel had to know it was going badly when she was called for a foul on a made 14-footer by Charles, even though Appel wasn’t within a foot of Charles on the shot attempt, which came with a little over eight minutes to play. VanDerveer was in a dilemma: Take an ineffective Appel out of the game or leave her in as a tribute to her star center, who was playing her last game. VanDerveer chose valor over disgression for a few minutes and the Huskies kept going right at Appel, who was finally pulled by VanDerveer.
Stanford couldn’t wrestle the game away from the Huskies because of shoddy ballhandling and poor shooting from beyond the arc. Of Stanford’s 11 turnovers, almost all were unforced. The 8-for-22 3-point shooting was a little deceptive. A couple came late, including a no-call bank trey by Pedersen.
Stanford let an opportunity escape right before halftime, another point not to be forgotten. A Husky turnover with 13.8 seconds to go gave Stanford the last shot. But, point guard Melanie Murphy passed the ball off a UConn defender, the ball going out of bounds with 5 seconds and change on the clock. Murphy, who hadn’t really played much the whole year, for some reason was the inbounder on the ensuing sequence. The Huskies put a taller defender on Murphy, who never got the ball in as the five-second violation was whistled. It was a golden opportunity for Stanford to go up 10 or 11 points at the break.
When you are trying to win a national title, those things can’t happen.
So say goodbye to Appel, who gave it her all, despite a rotten ankle. Stanford will have to find another way to do things next year, meaning freshman big Joclyn Tinkle will have to be much better her sophomore season than she was her freshman campaign. If Tinkle can improve the way Ogwumike did between her first two seasons, Stanford should be in good shape.
Ogwumike’s younter sister, Chiney, the national prep player of the year, arrives at Stanford next year. So does outstanding guard Sara James from Oak Ridge-El Dorado Hills
VanDerveer will have to work her magic once more to get to her fourth straight Final Four. Maybe the Cardinal will get another crack at mighty UConn, which somehow escaped with its seventh national women’s basketball title in the Alamodome.
That fact will be hard to forget for Stanford.
E-mail John Reid at jreid@dailynewsgroup.com.
